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ANN ARBOR, MI -- A 21-year-old Ann Arbor woman pleaded guilty as charged to one count of false report of a misdemeanor in 15th District Court on Monday, March 6.

Halley Bass admitted in court that she fabricated a story about a strange man scratching her face in downtown Ann Arbor on Nov. 15.

"I was suffering from depression at the time," Bass told Judge Elizabeth Pollard Hines. "I made a superficial scratch on my face. It was visible and I was embarrassed about what I'd done. So I made up a story and told a friend that a stranger had done it while I was walking. I was encouraged to report it to the police. I made the mistake of doing that."

At the time, Bass claimed her attack was part of the surge in hate crimes following the election of Donald Trump a week earlier. She told police she was targeted for wearing a solidarity pin connected to Great Britain's "Brexit" vote.

Bass admitted to scratching her own face with the pin after becoming upset during a Woman's Literature class at the University of Michigan, according to the Ann Arbor Police Department report.

Bass and her Ann Arbor-based attorney, Douglas Mullkoff, requested that she be sentenced through the 15th District's mental health court. Hines said if court officials determine Bass is eligible, Bass will be sentenced by Judge Karen Valvo in that court on March 22.

Report

Bass originally told police that she got out of class at Angell Hall around 1 p.m. and walked to the Starbuck's on the corner of East Liberty Street and South State Street, but left because it was too crowded, according to the report.

Bass said she then went to the Michigan Theater down Liberty to see what movies were playing and that while she was passing by "Graffiti Alley" a short time later a man attacked her, slashing her face with what she believed was a safety pin, the report said.

Bass told police the attack was likely prompted by the Brexit pin.

"(The) person must have seen the pin and picked on me," Bass said, according to the report. "That's my best guess. No other reason why he would be targeting me."

Police asked Bass if something like that ever happened to her before.

"I've heard of other people experiencing incidents recently, but not to me," she said.

The police noted several scratches on her face.

Bass described the suspect as an approximately 45-year-old white male, with stubble on his face, wearing a black baseball hat pulled low over his face, a gray hoodie with the hood down and sweat pants.

She has now admitted to making up the suspect.

Bass posted about the attack on Facebook the same day she reported the attack to the police, according to the report.

Bass later told detectives she wrote the post to convey "that all people are equal and deserve to have their voice heard and not feel endangered."

Detective pointed out her post had a dozen shares and more than 100 likes.

"It blew up a little bit more than I meant to," she said about the post.

First interview

On Nov. 17, Ann Arbor police Detective Robin Lee and Special Agent Sean Nicol of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sat down with Bass at the Ann Arbor Police Department for an interview.

The investigators observed the 21-year-old was nervous and asked why she was wearing the Brexit pin.

"... The significance of the safety pins is that ... to sort of like to show a solidarity with immigrants who feel threatened by Brexit. Um ... but now it's ... for people who feel threatened by president elect, Trump's his name ... Um so it was, it was to show, yeah, solidarity with the people like we show your fear and we want to help you get through it," she said, according to the report.

Bass also heard of other incidents on campus, including the incident of a woman wearing a hijab who said a man threatened to light her on fire if she didn't take it off. Ann Arbor police later determined that incident was a hoax too, though. The woman who falsely reported the crime is not being prosecuted in that case, however.

There are two things that stick out to me.

The first is that she figured the safety pin is so well-known a symbol that police would figure you could be targeted for wearing one.

So fixated are we now on the divisions between the two major parties that we forget how often internal divisions within one party or the other shape political outcomes. A rich history could be written of the conflicts that have sundered presidents and congressional leaders of the same party, in some cases friends who turned into bitter foes. The Texan Lyndon B. Johnson, who probably had closer ties with the Senate than any other president before or since, tangled with Dixiecrats on civil rights and then with northern liberals, including his former ally Eugene McCarthy, on Vietnam. In 1990, House Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, attacked George H. W. Bush for cutting a budget deal with Democrats and helped doom his reelection bid in 1992. It was Republican legislators who stopped George W. Bush’s attempt to reform immigration, helping wreck his second term.

Original join date: 11/23/2004GM of the Rumbler's League - Currently on Extended Hiatus
Caretaker of Khazan's Cosmic Library
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn and/or imaginatively created.

The first is that she figured the safety pin is so well-known a symbol that police would figure you could be targeted for wearing one.

The second is that the campus had two high-profile hate crime hoaxes.

It's awful that there's so many real things in life to feel bad about but some people feel the need to make stuff up. I hope she gets help. I also hope the internet leaves her alone, but that's unlikely. It's unkind to liars.

Nearly caught one in the cockpit when her clip was getting low,
still had twenty trash to ash before the boss says she can go.
Got places to be: But now it's hard to see: Armor's sparking bad, down to low integrity.
They're striking from the shadows: thermal optics on: target locks confirmed: hostile locals now begone.
And now it's time to go with her bonuses assured: but if they ain't:
Oh sir, your merc would like to have a word.

Don't let that distract you from Sessions' Lies, Healthcare Deform, Trump's failure as Commander in Chief, and everything else that's more legitimate criticism which we are being encouraged to forget about.

That first part creates a distraction from that second part. It's just jaw dropping that no one asked themselves "Are we getting played?"

It doesn't really add up that this was a leak by Trump's people themselves.
That was my first instinct, especially with Drudge and other Trumpeters comparing apples with oranges (like Trump's 2005 tax rate to Sanders' in 2015) to show how off the "he pays not taxes line" was.

The documents appear to have been leaked to two journalists:

Maddow, a Rhodes Scholar with a PHD, by all accounts one of the smartest people among political pundits. Who, as you pointed out, has been absolutely on fire with her Trump investigation.

The other,David Cay Johnston , is a Pulitzer price winner who specializes in tax scandal coverage.

True, so far the publication of this very specific, very partial look into Trump's tax history has done Trump a lot more good than bad.
But if that was the goal, wouldn't you have leaked it to somebody else? Why not Wikileaks? Why not Hannity? Heck, why not Don Lemon?

Why leak it to two people who are gonna ask the right questions and follow every lead out there?

Is it possible that somebody was testing the waters with this? Or that this was all they could get?

Maybe it's Marla Maples trying to scare Trump into paying her more money, without revealing her entire hand yet. Maybe it's the revenge of Tiffany Trump.

How many people has this guy oke doked with things that didn't add up?

A federal judge in Hawaii blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump's revised executive order on entry into the United States on Wednesday, just hours before it was to have taken effect.

The ruling, granting a request for a temporary restraining order by the state of Hawaii and Ismail Elshikh, stalls the president's second attempt to suspend admission of nearly all refugees for 120 days and to restrict visas for nationals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson, who said the restraining order applies nationwide, said Trump's travel order was religiously discriminatory. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the Trump administration had no immediate comment.

Watson, whom President Barack Obama appointed to the district court in 2013, didn't formally rule on the constitutionality of Trump's order itself. Critics, including Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin, have called it a thinly veiled unconstitutional "Muslim ban," which Trump has denied.

But Watson wrote that he believed Hawaii had a "strong likelihood of success on the merits" in its attempt to overturn Trump's order on religious grounds.

The court record, according to Watson, shows "significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus," in violation of the Constitution.

Watson cited public statements by Trump that he said proved that the order was targeted at Muslims — including his comments after he signed the first executive order in January that he was "establishing a new vetting measure to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America" because "we don't want them here."

Watson also cited remarks by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a prominent Trump supporter, who said in January: "When he [Trump] first announced it, he said, 'Muslim ban.' He called me up. He said, 'Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.'"

"A reasonable, objective observer — enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance — would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion," Watson wrote.

In addition to Honolulu, hearings on similar requests were held Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Bethesda, Maryland, and in Seattle, where judges didn't immediately issue any rulings.